Be the First Thing People Want to See When They Wake Up
“What I care about is building daily utility. Being the first thing people check when they wake up.” — Jack Dorsey
Daily utility is the holy grail of business.
If your fans use your service similar to how they consume electricity, water, or internet then you’ve made it.
Apple built daily utility with the iPhone; one might say they actually built an hourly utility. Facebook built it through social; the average user checks in 14 times a day. Amazon built it with Prime; it’s the first search whenever I buy anything. Nintendo built it through gaming; I’d play SNES with friends most afternoons until our moms kicked us out of the house.
We want to do something similar at Brainjolt:
Be the first thing someone wants to see when they wake up.
Okay, so I’d also be happy being the second thing if they have one of those partner things or baby things. But the first thing they want to see on their phone!
How can we possibly achieve this?
We’re lucky to have a starting base of a few hundred million people a month. But most of these users come to our sites only a few times. They’re not every day users.
It’s incredibly hard to be engaging enough to become a daily utility, and that means we’re going to have to rise above the noise and deliver content that is too good to ignore. Thumbnails and headlines that literally stop people’s thumbs from scrolling when they see them. Content so ridiculously engaging that people not only enjoy it — and not only share — but love so much that they want to come back tomorrow.
If we do this consistently — through small improvements every day — we’ll create more and more true fans.
Our mission is to surprise and delight the internet. And if we do that enough, we’ll keep creating true fans that want to see our content when they wake up.
It won’t be easy… but it sure won’t be boring, either.
This is how we’re building true fans… but there are lots of other ways. What are some ways you’ve tried (and failed or succeeded)? How else can a true fan be measured? What stats do you use to track if you’re winning or losing true fans? Would love to hear other perspectives in the comments!
